Royal children placed in a Residential Missionary school in Hawaii face personality disintegration from unrelenting attacks on their culture, identity and self-worth in the 1840's.
The scene is set as five children destined to become monarchs of Hawaii are placed into the hands of Calvinist missionaries in a residential school. The damage done to the self-concepts of these future monarchs by the Ethnocentric Monoculturalism of their teachers causes difficulties that come to life later in their life as they assume power. The facts surrounding the collapse of Hawaiian independence are woven into the story of two modern day Hawaiians, Keono Kane, a somputer specialist, and his girlfriend, Tamara Noguichi. The lovers are brought back in time against their will by the ghost of Queen Lili'uokalani. The ghost forces them to view the Queen's life and find the reasons that resulted in her reign being overthrown.
Excerpt
"Your Majesty, I mean Dear Mrs. Dominis. This is all so horrible." Mrs. Wilson broke down into tears herself. It seemed to strike Queen Lili'uokalani as rather funny. She managed a wan smile.
"Now, now Kitty. You'll have a hard time explaining this conversation to your husbland. It's hard to believe it's come to this though. I imagine I'm privately ruined as well as powerless. President Dole seized the private crown lands as well as my power. However what I feel so hopeless about is now that the aina, our beloved ancestral land, is now without pono, a rightful ruler. The sacred trust from Pele and the rightful Hawaiian Deities to the Ali'i nui, the highest ranking ruler of Hawaiian blood, has been struck down. The spirits of my brother David Kalakaua and the other Hawaiian monarchs, my hanai brothers from the Chief's Children's School, as well as William Lunalilo will never forgive me. And I, alas, cannot find it in my heart to forgive myself, either."
Tears marred the queen's face again in another flood. "Now there is no one to care what happens to our poor, rural people trying to eke out an existence from the ocean and the land as Hawaiians have done for centuries. What is to prevent Haole entrepreneurs like my brother-in-law Charles Bishop from taking whatever remains of their lands, miseducating their children, neglecting their health, and regarding them as only a cheap source of labor for their flourishing sugar-cane plantations.
"But your Majesty! Surely the Provisional Government is not so heartless."
"Auwe Kitty! I'm afraid President Dole and his associates believe in a strange religion that sees the owning of huge wealth as visible evidence that you are somehow chosen as one to inherit Heaven itself. They will not concern themselves with a people they view as idle and pagan."
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